Iran's nuclear game

Playing hardball

And no sign of backing down

IN LESS than a month's time, Iran's new government, which has yet even to be sworn in by parliament, could find itself in the dock at the UN Security Council for restarting nuclear work last week at its uranium-conversion plant at Isfahan. Breaking the seals put on Isfahan by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear guardian, also broke the terms of Iran's agreement last year with Britain, France and Germany to suspend all such dabbling with uranium and also with plutonium, two materials that could be used for bomb-making, while their talks continued. Restarting the plant likewise defied repeated IAEA resolutions, including one passed at an emergency meeting last week, calling on Iran to suspend all such nuclear work.

For a government barely in office, this is giving quick offence. Why take on the world so quickly? And what are the chances now of curbing the regime's presumed nuclear ambitions?

The next diplomatic set-piece will be at the IAEA, whose inspectors will report formally on September 3rd about just what Iran is up to at Isfahan, where yellowcake (uranium ore) is converted into a gas that can later be spun in centrifuge machines to make usable uranium. Iran insists that it has every right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to make uranium fuel for civilian power reactors, and that is all it wants to do. But two decades of lies and evasions uncovered by inspectors leave many governments unconvinced.

After rejecting out of hand a raft of European proposals—including co-operation in other civilian nuclear technologies, as well as improved trade, political and security ties—Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said Iran will present some ideas of its own to break the deadlock. Yet its new chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, appointed at the behest of the country's ruling clerics, insisted this week that uranium conversion will never be stopped; future talks, he said, would concern only the conditions under which Iran will restart work at an enrichment plant it is building at Natanz.

If Iran sticks to its guns, the IAEA's board will reconvene later in September, with little choice but to refer it to the Security Council. There the stance of Russia and China, both veto-wielding members, will be crucial. Indeed, Iran may well be counting on their help. Yet Russia, increasingly worried about Iran's intentions, would likely back an initial resolution calling on Iran to comply with IAEA requests. It could help too, argues Henry Sokolski of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Centre (NPEC), a Washington-based think-tank, if the IAEA's board or the council were to call for nuclear co-operation with Iran to be suspended until inspectors are certain they have a full accounting of its nuclear past. That would give Russia legal cover formally to suspend its work on Iran's Bushehr reactor.

China then might be loth to cast a lone veto. But the difficulty of getting beyond a wrist-slap from the council explains why the Europeans have been in no rush to get there. By reacting calmly in the face of the crisis Iran has now provoked, they hope to keep it squarely on the spot. Iran's tactics, by contrast, are to force the pace in the hopes of cracking European solidarity, splitting the Europeans from America, and appealing over their heads to those governments chary of setting a restrictive precedent on nuclear fuel-making that could hamper their own nuclear ambitions. Iran's recent intemperate behaviour ought to strengthen the Europeans' hand. Yet the difficulties of keeping even the European three on message are already apparent. Caught up in his own re-election effort, Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, broke ranks publicly by ruling out any future military action against Iran (none is planned).

The irritation that caused among British and French diplomats, however, is nothing compared with the difficulty they and America will face if Iran continues to balk. Theoretically, the Security Council could take a whole range of measures to make Iran uncomfortable: from selective visa bans for those involved in its nuclear programme, through embargoes of various kinds, to tough economic sanctions. But there is no consensus on any of these.

The UN is not the only recourse. But for their part the Europeans, unpractised at common coercive diplomacy, are only just starting to think through the ramifications of what might be needed. One idea doing the rounds if diplomacy goes on failing is for a maritime cordon, based on the practice of the American-led Proliferation Security Initiative, to stop shipments related to Iran's nuclear and other weapons programmes: a sort of PSI for the Gulf region. But making such a cordon tight and effective would be hard, especially without full support from Iran's neighbours, argues Michael Knights in a recent paper for NPEC. Meanwhile Iran has already hinted that if push came to shove, it would not be shy of using its own weapons: chiefly its oil and gas, but it also has a growing navy of its own. It shows no signs of blinking first.